The Lucky Ones
by Helen C
Summary: He has lost everything he has ever owned, just like everybody else, but he at least has his father back.


Title : The Lucky Ones

Author : Helen C.

Rating : G

Summary : He has lost everything he has ever owned, just like everybody else, but he at least has his father back.

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to joey for beta'ing this.

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**The Lucky Ones****  
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Helen C.

Dee is absently tracing the scar on his chest, her touch so light that he barely feels it. It's relatively late in the day and the bunk room is deserted. Lee has drawn the privacy curtain around them, more out of habit than anything else; they're not doing much besides lying in each other's arms. Cottle smirked when he said, "No strenuous activity of any kind," and Lee doesn't want to face the man if he aggravates his injury while having sex.

"Damn them," Dee says suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence. "After everything..."

After everything, dying at the hands of other humans would have been pretty damn ironic. Lee can only agree and sympathize with Billy. How unfair is it to survive a genocide only to be killed by people who can't see past their own hurt?

Lee still wonders if it was grief or thirst for vengeance that made them do what they did but he does know that their reasons don't matter. Because of them, people died or were hurt. Because of them, Lee spent hellish hours in the infirmary, high on pain medication and still praying that the pain would stop soon. Because of them, the fleet is one pilot short when they can't afford it—they can never afford it.

"Frak them," Dee says.

"Billy was angry with them, too," Lee offers, eyes staring straight ahead.

He feels her tense against him. The issue of Billy's death is a complicated one, and Lee could kick himself for bringing it up at such a time but on the other hand, he's not sure there will ever be a good time to address this.

"Sorry," he says. "I just... I don't know where that came from." He smiles apologetically, even though she probably can't see him in the dim light. "I just... I was out of it, but I remember you trying to help, and I remember hearing him..." He trails off, knowing she doesn't need it repeated.

She finishes the thought. "He said that the woman was expecting apologies, but that everyone had lost people."

"Yeah." Lee doesn't remember much of the evening, thankfully—a blur of painful sensations, of muzzy words, and more clearly, Dee and Billy's worried faces peering down at him.

"He was right." Dee snuggles closer to him. "Damn it, we lost everyone."

_Not everyone_, Lee thinks.

He still has his father, and it's one of the reasons why he never, ever talks about what he has lost. How can he complain when everyone aboard the ship has lost their families?

He still has part of his.

Sure, the thought of his mother, of his friends and his ship and his plans for the future being mercilessly destroyed makes him want to scream. He holds it back because there's no time for freaking out, and because he's better off than most of the people who survived.

Dee sniffs, turning her head away from him. "Sometimes, I wish we could have taken time to say goodbye to them. There was a ceremony, but it wasn't the same."

"No," Lee says. It's not like he hasn't thought about it countless times already.

"It felt like we said goodbye to everything, but not the ones we loved." Dee fumbles for words, trying to express something that everyone is aware of but that no one dwells on. "Not like they deserved. Not to all of them."

Silence falls again, and Lee finds himself offering, "One night, a few days after we came back from Kobol, I was in kind of a bad place. So, I drank a whole bottle of the Chief's moonshine and when I was done, I spent three hours writing down the names of everyone I lost—family, friends, teachers, girlfriends, classmates, fellow pilots. All the people I knew."

There's a measure of wonder in her voice when she says, "You did?"

Lee doesn't reply, his throat tight as he recalls how it looked—all these names scrawled on a piece of paper, one after the other, with barely any space between them.

He still doesn't know what the frak possessed him to do that. Somehow, it only made things worse—one name for every lost life. One name for all the dreams, for all the hopes destroyed. He remembers how, for the first time, the scope of the loss really hit him, and he spent half an hour sitting and staring off in the distance, numb from shock and alcohol.

His first crush ever, back when he was eight. Jen Williams.

The first teacher who made an impression on him. Hadar Troy.

White Snow, who was in flight school with him—pale, with hair so blond they looked white and eyes the lightest blue eyes Lee had ever seen.

Anne Cobb, the elderly neighbour back when he was a kid, who had a soft spot for him and always made him cakes when he was upset because his father had left again. He used to call her once a year on her birthday, even after he joined the military, and she always sounded pleasantly surprised that he still remembered her.

All of them are gone, forgotten, and no one cried for them because their families and their friends are gone too, and the few survivors of the human race don't have the time to grieve.

Dee's voice brings him back to the present. "Lee?"

He gathers his thoughts and goes on. "When I was done, I put the list of names into an empty bottle and I sent it into space."

She catches his meaning immediately. "Like a coffin, almost."

"Almost."

Ninety nice percent of humanity has been bombed into ashes or blown out of the sky, leaving nothing to bury. All they could manage were official ceremonies and empty boxes symbolically sent into space.

Dee is a good listener. He never told that to anyone before. How could he have?

After all, he's lucky. He has lost everything he has ever owned, just like everybody else, but he at least has his father back.

"He needs you," Dee says, out of the blue.

Lee raises an eyebrow, tilting his head in her direction. Is she reading his mind? Or is this another attempt on her part to make him believe that he's important to the people on the Galactica?

He wonders again what she heard over his comm. as he was drifting into space that day—the day he gave up and tried to die.

"If it hadn't been for you, we would have died the day of the attacks too. I'm sure of it. You saved the President, and the President ordered us to retreat, and I'm not sure he would have agreed if he hadn't known you were on board. When we though that Colonial One had been destroyed..." She shivers. "Well, it was bad," she concludes, her voice shaky.

Lee shrugs. "He's always been a survivor. He'd have found a way to go on."

"Maybe," she says, unconvinced. "But believe me, it wouldn't have been the same."

Lee thinks that it's too bad, because Kara's right. Sooner or later, a Cylon is going to be better than him, and it will be over. Frankly, he's getting tired, right down to the bone, of dodging bullets.

"It wouldn't be the same," Dee whispers.

The unspoken, "You're scaring me, please tell me you'll keep fighting," makes Lee close his eyes in defeat.

He'll try, but he isn't sure he has it in him to go on much longer.

His father was more right than he realised when he said that maybe the dead were the lucky ones.

Lee has felt unlucky for way too long. He'll fight the Cylons, because it's what he does, but he sure as hell isn't fighting to win anymore.

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end 


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